‘Our Hearts Are Broken Today’
U.S. reels in wake of shooting 28 killed in U.S. shooting tragedy; Gunman and his mother among the dead
NEWTOWN, Conn. — As gunshots echoed through an elementary school in Connecticut on Friday, children huddled in the corners and closets where desperate teachers had tried to hide them from the gunman who had invaded their school.
By the time it was over, 28 people, including 20 children the gunman and his own mother were dead, and a nation was left struggling to put some kind of context to its latest school massacre.
Hours after the tragedy, U.S. President Barack Obama struggled to maintain his composure as he tried to offer some comfort to those reeling from the events at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., a school whose name now takes its place among institutions forever linked to such violence, including Columbine high school and Virginia Tech.
“Our hearts are broken today,” Obama said, his voice breaking.
“The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old.”
“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the last few years ... I react not as the president, but as anyone else would — as a parent.”
The suspect this time is 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who is believed to have killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, a teacher at the school, before driving to the facility in her car with an arsenal that is now believed to have included at least five guns.
Reports in the wake of the shooting said Lanza suffered from some type of personality disorder.
After the bloodshed, Lanza took his own life. One person was injured.
One of the victims was a former Winnipeg girl, the Winnipeg Free Press reported Friday night, identifying her as the six-year-old daughter of former University of Manitoba jazz instructor Jimmy Greene. Her name was Ana.
Diane Licata, the mother of another child at the school, told Postmedia News her sixyear-old son witnessed the gunman shoot his first-grade teacher.
“Our son did see him shoot his teacher,” she said Friday night. “He’s traumatized. ”
Stories of the events that unfolded within the school revealed teachers’ frantic efforts to protect the young lives in their care.
Teachers locked their doors and ordered children to hide in closets and duck into corners.
As the shooting continued, someone switched on the school’s public address system, alerting people in the building to the attack by letting them hear the panic in the school office.
Theodore Varga said he was in a meeting with other fourth-grade teachers when he heard the gunfire, but there was no lock on the door. He said that over the public address system, “you could hear people in the office. You could hear the hysteria that was going on.”
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy attempted to bring some comfort to the state’s stunned residents.
“Evil visited this community today and it’s too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut — we’re all in this together,” Malloy said.
With files from The Associated Press